M. David StoneEpson Home Cinema 600 3LCD ProjectorThe Epson Home Cinema 600 home entertainment projector doesn't offer 3D or high resolution, but it delivers a bright, rainbow-free image at a bargain price.

Inexpensive. LCD engine means no rainbow artifacts. Bright enough to use in a living room or family room.

Cons

Native resolution is only 800 by 600. No 3D support. Obvious screen-door effect, with each individual pixel outlined by thin, black lines.

Bottom Line

The Epson Home Cinema 600 home entertainment projector doesn't offer 3D or high resolution, but it delivers a bright, rainbow-free image at a bargain price.

If you're in the market for an inexpensive, bright home entertainment projector, take a close look at the Epson Home Cinema 600 3LCD Projector ($359.99). It doesn't offer HD resolution or 3D support, but it can give you a big, bright image, and it's small and light enough to move easily from room to room or set up to watch a movie in your backyard on a summer night. It's not in competition with any full-fledged home theater projectors for image quality, but it delivers a more-than-usable image at a bargain price.

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The Home Cinema 600 is the direct replacement in Epson's line for the Epson PowerLite Home Cinema 500, which is discontinued at this writing, but still widely available on the Web, even on Epson's own site. Compared with the Epson 500, the Home Cinema 600 is a bit brighter, with a 3,000-lumen rating, but it's built around essentially the same design otherwise.

In both cases, the key factor behind the low price is low resolution. Most home entertainment projectors, including the Epson PowerLite Home Cinema 730HD, our Editors' Choice budget-priced 2D home entertainment projector, offer at least 720p (1,280-by-720) native resolution. Somewhat more expensive choices, like the Epson PowerLite Home Cinema 2030—our Editors' Choice 3D home entertainment projector—offer full 1080p HD (1,920 by 1,080). The Home Cinema 600 's native resolution is a mere 800 by 600 (SVGA).

The SVGA resolution makes it physically impossible for the Home Cinema 600 to show the level of detail you'd expect from even a 720p display. However, it's a higher resolution than standard-definition (SD) TV, which everyone found more than acceptable before HDTV and is still the resolution you get with some channels, even if you have cable or the equivalent and an HDTV.

Basics and SetupThe Home Cinema 600 checks off all the right boxes for a home entertainment projector. It's bright enough to stand up to the level of ambient light typical for a living room or family room at night, it has a built-in sound system, and it's small and light enough, at just 5 pounds 5 ounces and 3.1 by 11.6 by 9 inches (HWD), to make it easy to carry, as well as store away when you're not using it.

Setup is standard, with manual focus. There's also a digital, rather than optical, zoom to adjust the image size without having to move the projector. However, that's best avoided, since a digital zoom can introduce artifacts with some images.

Image inputs are limited, as you might expect for a low-price model, but they include everything you'll likely need, with an HDMI port, a VGA port for either a computer or component video, and both composite video and S-Video ports. In addition, there's a USB Type B port for direct USB display from a PC, and a USB Type A port, so you can plug in a USB memory key to read files directly.

Brightness, Image Quality, and Lag TimeAccording to the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) recommendations for extended viewing in theater-dark lighting, 3,000 lumens is bright enough to project a 202- to 273-inch image (measured diagonally). For moderate ambient light, the range drops to roughly 140 to 155 inches. For darker rooms or smaller screen sizes, you can adjust the Home Cinema 600's image brightness by switching to Eco mode, choosing one of the lower-brightness preset modes, or both.

For my tests, I used 1080p input from a Blu-ray player and let the projector scale the image to fit the available number of pixels in the LCD engine. As you would expect, the level of detail looked much closer to SD than HD. However, it was appropriately crisp for the resolution. Potentially more of an issue is that the low resolution produces the LCD screen-door effect—with each individual pixel outlined by thin dark lines—obvious from a typical viewing distance of 12 feet or even more from the roughly 98-inch (diagonal) image I used for most of my testing. At least some people will find this distracting.

Image quality is more than acceptable otherwise, although it's a bit short of excellent. Colors are a touch dull with theater-dark lighting, as you would expect with a low contrast ratio. However, that's not an issue with ambient light, which drastically lowers the effective contrast ratio for any projector. I also saw a slight green cast with the test unit even in the preset mode with the best color quality. However, it was minor enough so it's unlikely anyone would notice it without already being familiar with what the scene should look like.

On the plus side for image quality, I didn't see any motion artifacts or posterization (details changing suddenly where they should change gradually) in testing, and the projector did a good job with shadow detail (details based on shading in dark areas). It also helps that the three-chip LCD design guarantees that the Home Cinema 600 can't show the rainbow artifacts that virtually all DLP projectors show. Overall, the image quality is comparable to what you'd expect from a relatively high-quality SDTV.

If you're looking for a projector for gaming, the Home Cinema 600 's lag time is a little longer than you'll likely be happy with. I timed it using a Leo Bodnar Video Input Lag Tester at 46 milliseconds (ms), or roughly 2.8 frames at 60 frames per second. That's not much slower than the fastest projectors we've tested, at 33ms or 2 frames, but serious gamers tend to think even a 33mm lag is too long.

AudioThe built-in audio system, with a two-watt mono speaker, delivers good sound quality and easily enough volume for a small family room or living room. There's no audio-out port, however. If you want stereo or higher volume using an external sound system, you'll have to bypass the projector entirely, which means you won't be able to use its menus to switch the audio source automatically along with the video source.

ConclusionIf you want a higher-resolution—and higher-quality—image than the Epson Home Cinema 600 3LCD Projector offers, you'll have to consider a more expensive model, like the 720p Epson 730HD, or the even pricier 1080p Epson 2030, which also adds 3D support. If you don't mind the low resolution, however, or your primary consideration is cost, the Home Cinema 600 is a strong candidate, particularly if you want a projector you can move from room to room as needed, set up quickly, and also store away easily when you're not using it.

About the Author

M. David Stone is an award-winning freelance writer and computer industry consultant. Although a confirmed generalist, with writing credits on subjects as varied as ape language experiments, politics, quantum physics, and an overview of a top company in the gaming industry. David is also an expert in imaging technologies (including printers, moni... See Full Bio

Epson Home Cinema 600 3LCD Proj...

Epson Home Cinema 600 3LCD Projector

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